A Word from the President, Theo Stearns
The Origins of Sidewalk Counseling
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Twenty-three tears ago the founding members of Catholics United for Life had an inspiration. It was simply that, if we were unable to stop the national horror of legalized abortion for that day, we could at least try to save lives by attempting to stop some abortions each day.
Many, if not most, leaders of the movement opposed forms of direct action on the streets.
Yet we were drawn to the one place in our area where abortions were performed, the Santa Rosa County Hospital. Here we began to pray the Rosary each Sunday, joined on occasion by hundreds of people. As important as this was, however, it did not bring us into direct contact with mothers who were considering abortion. For that purpose we set up a portable table in the parking lot of the county health department where counseling and referral services for abortion were offered. From this position we were able to do our own counseling.
In 1978 CUL headquarters were located near Fresno, California, where an abortion entrepreneur, Dr. Allred, had recently established one of his abortuaries. Here, literally droves of women arrived several days a week to procure abortions from Allred's partner, Kenneth Wright, and we soon discovered the great opportunity we had to save babies.
We set aside signs and any other external evidence of demonstrating and organized our efforts to be the most effective means of reaching and speaking with people in order to offer alternatives to abortion. In Fresno, between 1978 and 1983, there was a rich harvest of babies saved -- babies who otherwise were scheduled for certain death. For five years we rarely left the arbortuary without at least one mother changing her mind and her baby being saved! Often, there were two, three, or more babies saved in but a few hours.
We insistently called this work sidewalk counseling to counter the media characterization of us as demonstrators. Sidewalk counselors, as opposed to demonstrators, should not be sent across the street unable to exercise their right to speak and counsel those considering abortion.
In 1979, Allred brought a civil suit against us, a case that became a major media event on the local television news. Everyone, including ourselves, assumed we could be restrained from entering the inner sidewalks of the medical complex that housed Allred's Family Planning Associates. This type of injunction would have effectively removed most opportunities to save babies.
It appeared that way until an obscure fact was discovered. Examining the parking lot with our attorney one day, we noted a public maintenance vehicle in the alley that bordered the long side of the abortion facility to within a few feet of the front entrance and running through the major parking area. A few words with the workers confirmed the fact that the alley was indeed maintained by the city and was public property.
When this information was revealed to the judge, we won a dramatic victory. We could not be driven away from speaking with abortion customers. The abortionists responded by hiring "escorts" to harass and physically obstruct us. Police arrived frequently in response to false accusations. But the work of saving lives went on.
A few years of intense experience with every type of situation (name-calling, physical threats, actual physical violence) taught us how to be effective: how to approach people; how to distract the escorts at crucial moments; how to talk with a woman's companion when he came out to smoke; how to avoid violence; basically, how to approach a multitude of different situations and scenarios. We recruited Spanish speaking counselors and even had our message translated into the Mung language when the area was flooded with Southeast Asian immigrants. We learned how to follow up with encouragement and practical forms of support.
Hardly any time passed until we found ourselves in court once more. This time another abortionist accused me and a Dominican priest, Father Dominic De Dominico, of throwing ourselves across the windshields of cars that entered the abortionist's parking lot. The absurd and dishonest accusations were quickly thrown out of court. This was, however, the occasion for us to meet and work with Patrick Monaghan, then General Counsel for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.
We expressed our conviction to Pat that every arbortuary should be covered by sidewalk counselors; that it would be to the shame of the pro-life movement if it did not make an effort to save babies each day. We were already promoting sidewalk counseling, but we wanted to begin a national program to convince other pro-life people of the importance of this form of pro-life witness. It was a program which quickly evolved to include speaking at pro-life conferences; promoting sidewalk counseling literature; explaining how to sidewalk counsel effectively and how to deal with its difficulties; attending weekend seminars to demonstrate sidewalk counseling; actual on-site training; and videotapes of sidewalk counseling for those we could not meet in person.
Since people naturally have a fear of getting on the wrong side of the law or dealing with court cases plus an uncertainty about what they can do and what would be a violation of law, CUL asked Pat for help in forming a network of pro-life attorneys who would defend the rights of ordinary people who wanted to save babies. In 1984, he and Charles Rice worked with CUL to found Free Speech Advocates -- today, the Center for Law and Justice International.
Many babies are alive because ordinary people had the courage to of onto the streets. And now, with the victory in the Schenck case behind us, we have the legal means to proclaim the Gospel of Life to those in most need of hearing it.